My “I’m Not Enron” T-shirt has people asking a lot of questions…

“There is no new cloud without (Nvidia CEO) Jensen (Huang),” Sari says. This makes the new clouds, in effect, extensions of Nvidia, he says. None of them are making money, so, in order to expand, they have to go into debt.

If we look at these as, figuratively, special-purpose vehicles from Nvidia, it doesn’t really matter whether the companies are good or will survive in the long term. Their mission is to boost Nvidia’s sales. Even OpenAI, also an Nvidia investment, falls into this category — because the massive data center buildout that OpenAI wants the government to support certainly involves a massive number of Nvidia chips.

If you’re old enough, or have a certain type of disposition, you might think, Wait a minute, Do you describe Enron? And oh, to some extent, yes! It was all Enron Special purpose vehicles Loria points out that highly speculative valuations were used to pay off the debt. But Enron lied about what it was doing, which is fraud and illegal. (It’s also gotten to other illegal things besides.) Nvidia’s relationship with CoreWeave is all happening in plain sight. The same applies to all relationships with other neocloud companies. It feels like the tech company’s version of GameStop open pump and dump.

“That’s not good behavior, and it’s not healthy behavior,” Lauria says. “But it’s legal. Any investor can see this. Many choose not to do it.”